Mary Agnes Lang, 1935-2013

Tribune office manager started scholarship fund for students from single-parent homes

April 30, 2013|By Graydon Megan, Special to the Tribune

Mary Agnes Lang

After raising five children on her own, Mary Agnes Lang understood the challenges of parenting without a partner, especially the difficulty of taking on college costs.

When one of her sons died at 32, she and her family established a foundation to provide college scholarships for the children of other single parents. Since the James P. Lang Scholarship Foundation was started in 1999, more than $500,000 has been distributed to 85 students.

Students are chosen based on need and receive $1,500 per year in scholarships that renew automatically for four or five years of college.

"At one point we had 30 kids receiving scholarships," said Mrs. Lang's son Christopher, who said the foundation got a great deal of early support from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Mrs. Lang, 77, died of liver disease Monday, April 15, in her Lombard home, according to her daughter Patricia Scudder. She had lived in Lombard for more than 50 years.

Mrs. Lang was a longtime office manager and editorial assistant for the Chicago Tribune.

"She ran us like she ran her family — with love and compassion and great discipline," said Tribune editor Mary Jane Grandinetti, who worked in the Suburban Trib office in Hinsdale where Mrs. Lang was office manager.

The former Mary Agnes Kowaleski grew up on the South Side of Chicago. After she graduated from Lourdes High School, since closed, she went to Rosary College in River Forest.

Mrs. Lang married in 1958, and she had five children ranging from age 4 to 12 when her husband left the family.

"She managed to raise her kids and get them all through Catholic high schools," her daughter said.

When her 32-year-old son, James, died following surgery in 1999, she and her family searched for a way to honor his memory.

"We all kind of got the idea," Scudder said, of helping children from single-parent homes with college expenses.

"It's just been a community effort over the years," said Christopher Lang, adding that the foundation raises most of its money with an annual golf outing.

"With just one event a year, we've raised quite a bit of money," he said.

Sarah Vernon received the first of four one-year scholarships in 2005. Vernon, whose father died when she was 11, used the money to help pay for her education at Hope College in Holland, Mich.

"Such a great cause, and it really does help make college affordable," Vernon said. "It really helped me to prepare myself for my future."

Vernon went on to get a master's degree in social work from the University of Chicago and is working on her doctorate in the field.

Mrs. Lang joined the Tribune in 1977 as office manager in the Hinsdale office of the Suburban Trib, then a separate publication. She later worked for the company in several other locations before retiring in 2005.

"She was unique, original, passionate and caring, and we were very much her family," Grandinetti said. "She knew how to get things done, and you knew where you stood with her."

Tribune Problem Solver columnist Jon Yates, who worked with Mrs. Lang in the Oak Brook bureau in the early 2000s, described her as a den mother who kept everybody in the office in line.

"An incredibly kind woman who let you know what she thought about things — hard-nosed but a soft interior," Yates said.

Terry Brown, the bureau chief in Oak Brook when Mrs. Lang was there, called Mrs. Lang "the glue that held us all together."

Scudder said a number of donations have come in her mother's name since her death.

"She was very proud of the scholarships and the foundation," Scudder said. "She liked that we were giving back and keeping my brother's name alive."

Other survivors include another daughter, Mary Terese; another son, Michael; a brother, Edward Kowaleski; and 10 grandchildren.